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Bushism Truisms.

Aug 11 2004

Haiko Hebig shares the following Bushism taken from a Defense bill signing on August 5.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Hilarious, right? I thought so. So I followed the quote to its source to confirm our President’s idiocy.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. We must never stop thinking about how best to defend our country when we all must always be forward-thinking. (emphasis added)

Now, this is still a pretty funny Bush-ism. But it (like many of his other missteps) is completely taken out of the context of what he is saying. And the punctuation of the transcription doesn’t help either. Changing a period to a colon transforms the meaning to what was intended:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people. And neither do we: We must never stop thinking about how best to defend our country when we all must always be forward-thinking.

Such mis-quotes dilute the power of actual Bush-isms and are, to boot, patently unfair. Anyone can create a bush-ism, or kerry-ism given enough public speech material, the ability to leave out the context under which things are said, and the ability to choose where the commas and periods go.

I agree, a similar type thing happened with a Senator being quoted at saying people shouldn’t marry box turtles. Turns out the quote was in the printed version of his speech given to the press, but the Senator wisely left out the remark while giving the speech. Yet he was still attributed with the quote on a bunch of different news stations (including The Daily Show, if you count that as news). You can craft anything from a public speech

Posted by: Dan Cramer at August 11, 2004 01:44 PM

This is still a Bushism. Bush typically uses repetition in his speeches. Somehow I think your revised version with the period and colon is the less likely alternative. He said “and so are we” to end the first sentence and most likely was repeating the sentence structure in the second sentence, so he ended with “and neither do we.”

Besides, even if you accept the new version with the modified punctuation it still amounts to the same thing. The fact that he starts the sentence with “And neither do we” still means he’s relating it back to the last sentence which talked about thinking of ways to hurt the country. You can change the punctuation all you want, it’s the words that are the problem.

Posted by: Eric at August 28, 2004 09:36 PM

Eric, You are spot on. I agree that this is totally a “Bush-ism.” To clarify, I did state earlier that this “is still a pretty funny Bush-ism,” but my last paragraph did not make sense. The intent I was trying to get across is that, in spite of the obvious fumbling grammar, this phrase sounds worse on paper than it does in real life—especially given the number of ums, uhs, and pauses that usually accompany any given sentence from a Bush speech. In other words, he may be a poor orator, but he’s not an idiot.

Posted by: Trent at August 28, 2004 10:17 PM

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